Samizdata flags up a typically stupid piece by John Sutherland in the Guardian.

I've really come to loathe John Sutherland, who appears from his columns suffused with anti-Americanism and a clearly ill-merited sense of intellectual superiority. Take his piece today:

But the runaway success of Natural Cures also bears witness to genuinely troubling aspects of the American healthcare system. It has been estimated that some 50 million citizens have no health insurance. For these desperate people, who fall sick like everybody else, "natural cures" are all they can afford. "Socialised medicine", as the Clintons learned the hardway, has no place in America. Capitalistic medicine does. What John le Carré calls "Big Pharma" has made America the most drugged nation in history.

As the Samizdata post points out:

Which "explanation", unfortunately fails to account for some important facts: (1) the purportedly natural non-cures offered by quacks are not generally cheaper than the products of Big Pharma, even at US prices; (2) the most drugged nation in history, is on average (i.e., including all those without health insurance) rather healthier than Britain if you look at survival/recovery patterns for pretty much any disease; (3) The European quack industry is also fabulously successful, and expensive, despite the subsidised competition from socialised medicine.

There's a further point, which is my bete-noire. Sutherland writes:

It has been estimated that some 50 million citizens have no health insurance.

Er, no. It hasn't. Not accurately, anyway. The figure is around 44 million (which itself is hotly disputed for being way too high). Let's ignore his casual inflation from 44 million to 50 million. This is my real bug bear: to cite that figure as evdidence that even 44 million are "desperate people, who fall sick like everybody else" and that "natural cures are all they can afford" is utter rubbish.

That figure is a snapshot of the uninsured at any one time, which includes all sorts of people, from those between jobs, those who are unemployed and those who do not want insurance. The people who have a problem are the chronically uninsured - those who can't get insurance. And although the number of chronically uninsured is way too high, and needs to be dealt with, it is around the 8 million mark.

So Sutherland is wrong by around 42 million. Quite an achievement.